(http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper871/stills/8u2an7rb.jpg)
One of my friends from high school is an editorial cartoonist for the UGA student newspaper. The above image is one of his cartoons, which ran in yesterday's paper. I find it incredibly poignant, and when first shown the image I likened it to Mike Luckovich's 9/11 drawing with the weeping Statue of Liberty. The UGA student body's reaction was somewhat different to mine - namely, going completely apeshit and flooding the newspaper editors with letters of outrage and demands that the artist responsible be fired. Thankfully, the editors were more sensible than that, although they weren't too pleased with the volume of hate mail they received (being a left-wing political cartoonist, most of his work offends a fairly large demographic of UGA students anyway, but not nearly to this extent). He gave a clarification (http://media.www.redandblack.com/media/storage/paper871/news/2007/04/17/Opinions/Editorial.Cartoon-2844542.shtml?reffeature=recentlycommentedstoriestab) for the drawing, if not a full-fledged apology, that ran in today's paper. The throngs have yet to disperse.
I have a pretty thick skin, so I may not be the best person to gauge how offensive something is, but I don't think what it is this time. I wasn't just unperturbed by this cartoon, I was very deeply moved. I think it captures perfectly the stark horror of the shootings. I am puzzled as to why such a large number of people completely misinterpreted it.
So, Party People, I submit this to you, as a diverse audience endowed with (hopefully) more understanding of the ways of the world than the average undergrad, and singularly well-suited to the critique of works of cartoonery (I'm not sure what the real word for that is) - does this offend, or not? Is this drawing really in poor taste, and I, my friend, and the editors who allowed it to be printed have simply failed to realize it? Or do the folks down there (more specifically, students at UGA) just not get it?
Well, it looks like people are having a number of different reactions to the cartoon: Some positive, some negative to varying degrees, and a lot of "I don't get it" responses (which is typical for my friend's cartoons, even his non-political stuff). But for the most part even the people who weren't offended have said they can understand how others were.
I thought this might be the case. It doesn't surprise me that reasonable people could be offended by this, but I was hoping for some kind of validation that I wasn't being a dick myself for having liked it, and I think I've gotten that from this thread. Rumjay, I'm especially glad to know that you, as someone for whom these events have been so close to home, were as moved as I was. That makes me feel much better about this than I would otherwise.
I wouldn't think too poorly the people at UGA just because a bunch of them want my friend fired, either. I'm sure some of them of them are just acting a fool over this, but from what I understand, a lot of the students calling for the dude's head had been doing so anyway well before this particular cartoon ran, and this only caused them to redouble their efforts. Of course, in a way that's even worse than just overreacting, but whatever. They're people with an agenda, and for all the uproar, it doesn't look like anything is actually going to come of it.
[...] I think the black background combined with the gun made it look too 'trying to be cool' rather than sorrowful.
Although from what you describe, this was NOT his intent, it looks like he's glorifying it with a drawing that looks Hollywoodesque. I don't like it.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/170000/images/_171224_bond_logo_300.jpg)
I think this brings up an important point with respect to the portrayal of gun violence in American culture. I suspect a large number of those offended by the cartoon made at least some sort of association with the smoking gun being glamorous, and expecting that the artist intended them to think it was cool. That's not to say they weren't justified in taking offense for that reason, but if that's really the case it's pretty disturbing in its own right.
Also, very good point about the use of the school's logo linking the killings to the school's identity. I hadn't thought about it that way, and I certainly hope people won't make that association too readily once this is in the past. I think the Kent State shootings were an entirely different case, though, due to their political context. That was a defining moment in the larger historical narrative of the Vietnam protest movement, rather than an isolated tragedy carried out by a lone madman, and therefore it has much more staying power. It's been about the same amount of time since Charles Whitman did his thing up in the clock tower, and the University of Texas has managed to avoid its reputation being tarnished in the same way. Hopefully that will prove true for Virginia Tech also.
EDIT: Wow, what an utterly crap time this was for me to have hit 187 posts. I'm relieved to have gone back to being Chucklebot again.